WEMU's spring fundraising drive falls just short of ambitious goal

Last week's fundraising drive at Ypsilanti public radio station WEMU-FM (89.1) went into overtime - fitting, since the station's coverage of the EMU men's basketball team's win in the first round of the CollegeInsider.com Tournament was a primary reason - and came fairly close to reaching its ambitious $200,000 goal.

"It's a high goal for us, and we fell about $7,000 short when we added everything in," said station manager Mary Motherwell. " … It's the most we've ever raised in a spring pledge drive, but we're not quite where we want to be yet."

WEMU - which offers National Public Radio programming and jazz - has been raising its fundraising goals since 2011 "to offset the voluntary budget cut of $250,000 over 3 years we took from EMU after state support to higher ed was cut by 15 percent," Motherwell explained.

Motherwell hopes that post-pledge drive efforts will take care of this relatively small shortfall.

"We always precede our on-air campaign with a mailing, and we do a mailing right after it, too, to appeal to people we didn't hear from," said Motherwell. "I'm very confident that our listeners will step up and make up the difference."

Last week's pledge drive, originally scheduled to end on Thursday, was extended until Friday at 7 p.m. (Heading in to Friday, WEMU's pledge drive had raised $166,632.)

"Part of that was because we had to cut off part of the previous day's broadcast because of the EMU basketball game," said Motherwell. " … We were happy that the team got to play in the post season, but the game was happening during what is usually our frantic finish time. So we pushed it forward another day, and we did really well."

With just a small shortfall to cover, Motherwell does not currently anticipate any significant changes at WEMU.

"We'll have to take a look at where we are after this mailing, of course," she said. "It's not like our budget has a lot of wiggle room."

Motherwell also noted that WEMU's reach and fundraising pool is significantly different from that of Michigan Radio (WUOM).

"Michigan Radio draws from two thirds of the Lower Peninsula, while we just draw from Washtenaw County and the surrounding areas," Motherwell said. "Our coverage area is much different. That's not always made clear, but we have to get our money from a fairly small area."

Jenn McKee is an entertainment reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Reach her at jennmckee@mlive.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.